How things look through an Oregonian's eyes

December 30, 2004

My problem with “Meet the Fockers” started right at the ticket booth when I slurred my words as I said, “Two for Meet the, um, Foh, um, kickers.” I’m not usually shy about swearing, phonetically or otherwise, but for some reason I froze when I got face-to-face with the sweet young female thing behind the counter at Salem’s Movieland.

We saw this film Christmas Eve, along with a handful of other family- and friend-less losers who had nothing better to do that evening. Fortunately Laurel suggested that we see “Meet the Fockers,” or I would have had to endure her usual complaining on the drive home (“What made you think I’d enjoy that movie? It was way too ______ [violent/ depressing/ predictable/ slapstick/ fill in the blank]”)

Though this was a perfect opportunity for me to get back at her, with it being Christmas Eve it didn’t seem right to make her poor movie choice the focus of our after-flick dinner conversation. Instead, we joined forces in agreeing that the first in this series of “Meet the’s”, “Meet the Parents,” was more enjoyable than the second.

So we recommend waiting to rent “Meet the Fockers” for a few bucks, which is about what a few hours with Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand, and company is worth. Seeing De Niro’s cat flush a small dog down a toilet would have been worth the price of admission for me if that price had been, say, just $3.79.

And in this movie’s cost-benefit analysis you have to adjust the joy of watching the dog-flushing with the pain of hearing De Niro’s toddler grandson say his first word, “asssss…holllllllle,” (translation: “asshole”) about twenty times more than the once or twice that would have amusing.

On the whole “Meet the Fockers” tries too hard to be funny. This is the cinematic equivalent of someone saying “You’re going to really love this joke!” and then starting to laugh themselves just at the thought of how funny what they’re about to say is. Usually, it isn’t.

This is a big part of why Laurel and I liked “Napoleon Dynamite” so much. A DVD rental, I was surprised to see that Roger Ebert only gave it a measly one and a half stars (here’s a more positive review.) It had a long run at Salem’s art film house, Salem Cinema, and Ebert says in his review “I’m told the movie was greeted at Sundance with lots of laughter.” As well it should have been.

“Napoleon Dynamite” elicited a lot more laughs from us than did “Meet the Fockers.” It is understated instead of focking over the top. The movie’s geeks—Napoleon, Kip (his brother), Pedro (his best friend), and Deb (his crush)—are just like people I knew in high school back in 1962-66. I’m sure they also are just like people in high school now, in 2004-05.

Ebert observes that the movie doesn’t try to be a comedy or make Napoleon likable. Well, that’s why the movie is funny and why I found Napoleon so appealing. Though he and Dr. House (see “House” on Fox, Tuesday nights) are very different, they share a dryly cynical view of the world that is a refreshing antidote to Oprah-style positivity. You’ll never hear Dynamite or House spouting platitudes like “Freedom is on the march.” I’ll take Napoleon’s oft-repeated “Gosh!” (the way he says it is wonderful) anytime.

If you rent the DVD here’s a tip about the extra features: We spent fifteen minutes searching for a post-production wedding party scene that Laurel said was called a “must-see” in a newspaper article. But where was the damn thing??!! We watched every single deleted scene and scanned through every other extra feature. No trace of anything resembling a wedding.

Until I had the bright idea of turning the unlabeled DVD over. And there on the other side was what must be a “second draft” of the DVD. The extra features on this side were in a different format and included the wedding party piece.

Of course, after having such great expectations for the extra feature it didn’t turn out to be all that good. Worth watching, though, to see Jon Heder (who plays Napoleon) try to stay on a lively horse armed only with the riding skills of, in his words, “a horsemanship merit badge.”

December 29, 2004

Courtesy of the BBC’s “The World” program, here are some weblogs that are reporting on the South Asia tsunami disaster and soliciting aid for the area. There’s an intimate immediacy to many of the bloggers’ postings that is missing from the newspaper, radio and cable stories Laurel and I have seen/heard.

December 28, 2004

While clearing blackberries today with my new best friend, a cordless chainsaw, I thought about how I’m losing all sense of proportion.

Thank heavens. I just hope I can keep going until every last bit of proportionality is lost. I feel like I’m halfway there, but the fact that my mind can spit out an expression like “halfway” shows how far I have to go.

This afternoon I took a break from the blackberries to eat some lunch and get the mail. A letter had come from a book reviewer to whom I had written a plaintive query: “Why haven’t you reviewed ‘Return to the One’ when it is so obviously an important book that your readers should know about?”

He told me that his editor wants him “to keep his column confined to basically ‘general audience’ books” and that he wouldn’t be reviewing my book. I spent a few minutes rehearsing eloquent counter-arguments until I realized that I’d never talk with this reviewer, nor his editor.

If they don’t think there is an audience for one of the best-written books about one of the most important Western mystic philosophers, to hell with them. And to hell with all of the other reviewers who have ignored “Return to the One” so far. That’s the attitude I took with me as I returned to my blackberry labors.

Ever since Christmas, when I got the chainsaw as a gift from myself, I’ve been spending a lot of time clearing blackberry brambles. There’s a lot of other things I could be doing, and indeed should be doing, but I’ve been ignoring them. I like getting dirty (and bloody). I like freeing willows, ferns, and other oppressed vegetation from their blackberry prisons.

As it was getting dark today I finished clearing this rotting stump from a tangle of vines. I felt really good. I like to imagine that the ferns felt good too.

It can take hours to clear a small blackberry-infested area on our newly-acquired five acres. I have no idea what the cost-benefit ratio is of what I’m doing. I don’t think there is such a ratio. What is the worth of revealing a marvelous mossy log that we will enjoy looking at every time we walk by?

I don't know. Nature makes me lose all sense of proportion. When I’m pulling blackberry vines off of a tree, at that moment it strikes me as the most important thing in the world to do. And so it is.

Often I’m embarrassed to tell the truth when people ask me, “How long did it take you to write your book?” I mumble something like, “Oh, a few years. It was a lot of work.” For some reason I don’t want them to know how much time I put into the book, and how little I’ve gotten back—in terms of money, sales, recognition, that is.

I looked in my thick “Return to the One” correspondence file just now to remind myself of when I started pondering Plotinus. It was June 1996. Eight years from vague idea to concrete published reality. I didn’t work full-time on the book, but my labors deserve a grander description than “a lot of work.” Words fail me. Let’s just say, “It was more work than you can imagine.”

So, today I’m clearing blackberries and thinking about what I put into the book and what I’ve gotten out of it. Input: eight years, thousands of dollars, dozens of manuscript drafts written and rewritten, dozens of scholarly books read and analyzed. Output: a few hundred books sold, a few obscure reviews published.

And would I do it all over again? Of course. Those “inputs” and “outputs” are bullshit. They don’t begin to describe what I put into the book and what I’ve gotten out of it. Even more: really, there isn’t any difference between the two. Input, output. Cost, benefit. Cause, effect.

I have no idea where one begins and the other ends.

Somewhere in the midst of those crazy, unproportioned eight years I made a vow. To Plotinus, and to me. To a long-dead Greek philosopher and to a still-living Oregon writer. I vowed that I would write the best, the truest, the clearest book about Plotinus’s teachings that I could.

If other people liked it, fine. But I cared a lot more about whether Plotinus liked it. And whether I liked it. I’m not sure about Plotinus; I am sure about me. Eight years of work, two readers to please in the end. The work and the pleasing—they all blend together. There’s no way to tell how proportional something is when you can’t tell one side from the other.

I took a photo of my blackberry clearing area today. The setting sun was behind me. I could see a shadow of me taking a photo of my shadow. It struck me that I’m as unsubstantial as that one-dimensional Brian projection. Fifty years, five years, five months, five days, five minutes, or whenever from now the blackberry clearer is going to be no more.

Where is the proportionality in that? I’ve spend a lifetime working on being me, and then…what? The known of my life bears no proportion to the unknown of my afterlife.

Compared to that (there I go again, still trying to hold onto proportion), it doesn’t matter whether I’m writing a book or clearing blackberries. Whether anyone reads the book or if the blackberries grow back. Whether what I’m saying right now makes sense to anybody else or if it sounds like gibberish.

There’s freedom in losing all sense of proportion. Maybe the only real freedom.

December 26, 2004

The guy sitting outside the Coffee House Café this morning looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him. Gucci jeans jacket. Oliver Peoples designer eyewear. He looked like he belonged in Hollywood rather than Salem.

I couldn’t tell exactly what he was saying on the cellphone, but I thought I heard “If you can’t get Leonardo and Julia for less than 30 mill, I’m out of this deal.” Or, maybe not.

After I snapped the first photo, the guy smiled, motioned me closer, and took off his dark glasses. Now I recognized him! It was me.

I just didn’t feel like myself after my West Hollywood daughter, Celeste, and her husband, Patrick, gave me the Gucci jacket for Christmas. I couldn’t wait to wear it in public today. However, the decidedly counter-culture Coffee House Café isn’t exactly the place to go if you want people to admire your Italian fashion statement.

I didn’t get one comment about the jacket, except from my friends: “Stop talking about how it says ‘Gucci’ on the buttons, please.” Well, at least it was a comment.

Patrick manages the men’s department at the Gucci store on Rodeo Drive, and Celeste is an account executive with Oliver People's Eyewear (note to the Gucci webmaster about the store locator page: it is “Beverly” Hills, not “Beveryly”—for this proofreading work I’ll accept another jeans jacket in a different color).

Celeste had given me the gradient lens, reflective Olivers People’s dark glasses about a year and a half ago, so fortunately I had cool shades to go with my new cool jacket. About the only thing I lacked was a cool cell phone, but my friend Hans loaned me his Samsung flip phone when he saw that I was planning to pose with an (ugh) basic Nokia.

Thanks to Celeste and Patrick for adding a dash of southern California style to my rather drab life. When Laurel and I visit you next month I’ll be heading right off to the Gucci store to do some shopping. But unless I win the lottery, it will probably just be for some socks. (How much is that employee discount, Patrick?)

December 23, 2004

[Note: all our Christmas letters, 1995 to 2017, are available below. I update this post annually with the newest creation.]

“A man’s soul is revealed through his Christmas letters,” it has been said (by me, just now). So I’ve decided to express my essential self this holiday season not by going downtown and volunteering at a soup kitchen, but by sitting at my laptop and converting my past holiday missives into PDF files that can be admired by the world. Or, at least, the few people who find them on this weblog.

Previously these Collected Christmas Letters of Brian Hines resided on my website, where, as I wrote about recently, they took a significant dive in search engine rankings after I fiddled with the content of a page. “What profiteth a man if his works are not looked on with favor by the great god Google?” I pondered. “Noneth at all,” came the reply from the divinity that I serve with such devotion—namely, my ego.

Thus I was led to pour the wine of my annual Brian, Laurel, and Serena (a.k.a. "The Wonder Dog") news summary into a new PDF bottle for easier reading, and to post these files on HinesSight where, hopefully, they will be more visible to those who might wish to study my oeuvre. I’ve reduced the size of some photos for a quicker download by those who, like me, have not yet been blessed with a broadband connection. To say what barely needs to be said, “get Acrobat Reader if you don’t have it already."

In the same way as the soul’s essence defies description, any attempt to summarize the theme of each wonderfully amusing and wise Christmas Letter in a few words is doomed to failure. Nonetheless, I have tried.

2018 Christmas Letter. The midterms give us the only present we need this year, DGTABT (Dems Giving Trump A Bad Time). Brian is told "You're otherwise healthy." But that otherwise is bothersome. An atheist discussion group continues; a book gets back into print; we look forward to magic mushrooms being legal here in Oregon.Download 2018 Christmas Letter PDF

2017 Christmas Letter. Brian wants a new bladder for Christmas, since his old one is shot, but manages to cope with some good friends: anti-depressant, pot, and wine. Laurel turns even more strongly atheist, though we're open to miracles (like Trump resigning).Download 2017 Christmas Letter PDF

2016 Christmas Letter. Serious depression strikes us, the only good news being that it came on only after November 8, which (surely not coincidentally) happened to be the day Trump was elected president. Since "post-truth" was the Word of the Year we take that to heart in the rest of our Holiday Greetings letter.Download 2016 Christmas Letter PDF

2015 Christmas Letter. Belatedly, we discover that every stage of life is an "awkward age." A musing on the joy of peeing in one's front yard and what this means for our retirement plans. We end with a poem that praises secular kindness.Download 2015 Christmas Letter PDF

2013 Christmas Letter. Ooh, ooh! So much to share. Our dog pees in the basement of Oregon's governor mansion. Brian carries on with longboard land paddling. We downsize to a stick lean-to in the central Oregon forest.Download 2013 Christmas Letter

2012 Christmas Letter. Us senior citizens refuse to grow old, in our own minds at least. Brian takes up skateboarding/longboarding. We do our best imitation of West Coast Swing dancers.Download 2012 Christmas Letter

2009 Christmas Letter. It was a disastrous year for us. We threw money into a hole in the ground (almost literally). Laurel got distressed by Brian's assisted suicide attempt, though I had a lot of fun with it. Download 2009 Christmas Letter

2008 Christmas Letter. We get into the holiday spirit with our usual fear and trembling. Turning 60, Brian notes his increasing resemblance to Willie Nelson. And his passionate love affair with a classy lady called "Mac."Download 2008 Christmas Letter

2006 Christmas Letter Brian ponders his incipient grandfatherness, a scary prospect. We also speak of dog walking, colonoscopies, Tango, land use activism, and why blogging is better than book writing.Download 2006_christmas_letter.pdf

2005 Christmas Letter It finally hits us: We're getting old! The ramifications of this astounding discovery are explored. Photos of us are bravely shared, along with images of a headless dog and a disturbingly youthful-looking daughter/son-in-law.Download christmas_letter_2005.pdf (778.0K)

December 22, 2004

Finally! A Supreme Court gets it right in an important election dispute. According to wire reports the Washington Supreme Court has ruled that more than 700 King County ballots should be counted, which likely will favor Christine Gregoire given the left-leaning tendencies of that county. Of course, if her purported eight vote statewide lead (without the additional ballots) holds up, this ruling may be moot.

I got hooked on the live coverage of the Supreme Court hearing this morning on C-Span. Good arguments by both sides, but I thought the Democratic Party attorney was particularly smooth and persuasive. Not quite as provocative as the O.J. trial, but blessedly much shorter.

December 21, 2004

How Google ranks web pages in a subject of great interest to those who care about such things. Unless someone is completely ego-less (which I’m certainly not), this includes most people who desire that others see what they put on the web. So attempts to fathom Google’s mysterious page-ranking methods abound. Here’s an example.

Today I found something interesting. I’d be interested to hear from anyone with more knowledge in this area of Googleology about whether my experience truly reflects a Google Law of Ranking. Is my conclusion in this post correct, that changing the wording of a Google excerpt that appears in a search result can be dangerous to the health of your ranking?

As I wrote about yesterday, my collected Christmas letters have been on my www.brianhines.com web site for several years. Periodically my ego would lead me to check on how my Christmas letter page fared in the “Christmas letters” Google search ranking. I noted that it gradually ascended as time passed, seemingly not so much because of links to the page, but mainly from its stability and longevity.

Then I became Google-greedy a few weeks ago. I saw that the page excerpt which appeared on Google was rather bland. So I added a few flowery (and entirely accurate) adjectives so that the excerpt would read: “the wonderfully amusing and wise collected Christmas letters….”

Is it possible that Google punishes displays of ego? No, that can’t be true, or you wouldn’t see what you do when you type a single “p” in the beta Google Suggest search box.

I thought this, though, when I saw today that my beloved collected Christmas letters page had plummeted in the Google page rankings after the revised page had been found and indexed. Google didn’t like my adjectives! Or, more likely, Google didn’t like that the key words on this page had changed.

So on the one hand Google is known to reward web page stability. But on the other hand Google seems to punish certain types of changes. Go figure. Google giveth and Google taketh away.

I’ve read that Google likes weblogs because they tend to have numerous links and are updated frequently. I certainly have found, as other bloggers have noted, that a simple weblog post on some subject will quickly become a Google favorite. For example, I was pleased to find today that the #1 result of a search for (Salem) “Mayor Janet Taylor” turns up a recent ranting by yours truly about Salem City Council shenanigans.

I love Google because it is so powerful, wise, and mysterious. Such a being deserves to be worshipped. And I do.

I just wish I could better understand what pleases you, Almighty Google, so that I could serve you better. Not selflessly, of course, but so you can reward me and elevate my writings above less deserving acolytes.

December 20, 2004

This year we made a major announcement in our Christmas letter: we’ve declared our psychic independence from the United States of America. Now that we have a full ten acres of south Salem land to establish our Hinesland realm on, the post-November 2 world we found ourselves in begged for an enclave where truly wise environmental, cultural, and spiritual values—namely, our own—could be practiced.

The full story of Hinesland, or at least as much as can be conveyed in a single page, is in our 2004 Christmas letter. Most of these were mailed out today to those on our Christmas card list, but if you aren’t one of these fortunate souls, or if you just can’t wait for the mailperson to deliver the letter to your door, click on the link below (you know the mantra of PDF files: “get Acrobat Reader if you don’t have it already”).Download Christmas Letter 2004.pdf (15.7K)

Here’s the photo of Hinesland’s citizenry mentioned in the letter. Note: Serena the Wonder Dog usually is more photogenic. This shot was taken after numerous other self-timed attempts in which Laurel would grab our dog’s front legs and yell “Up Serena, up!” as I madly ran around the camera to take my position. Serena was waiting to go for a walk and by this point was rapidly losing patience with the photo shoot.

Soon this 2004 letter will be added to the nationally-renowned (within the nation of Hinesland) Collected Christmas Letters of Brian Hines. I have assembled these in one cyberspace accessible location in the hope, so far unfulfilled, that one day the brilliance, humor, wisdom, and simple majesty of these writings will be recognized by an audience hugely larger than the fifty or so people on our Christmas card list.

Well, I’d be content with something less than “hugely,” actually. For if there is one theme that runs throughout my oeuvre, it is that you can’t always get what you want. Strangely, the Rolling Stones who wrote that line did get what they wanted—great fame and fortune, plus beautiful babes.

I am still waiting for the first two and probably always will. But number three is mine--a lovely Queen of the Hinesland realm.

December 18, 2004

Artificial or real? We are not the only ones to struggle with this question. Pamela Anderson has bounced back and forth, so to speak, in her own answers. But Laurel and I are happy that we’ve stuck with our artificial choice, the 10 foot tree that has graced our living room for three Christmases.

It was difficult for us to make the break from the previously-alive Noble Firs we used to buy from a South Salem lot. Now, we’re happy that we did. If you’ve been considering making the switch to an artificial tree, perhaps the case study that I conducted yesterday will help you decide whether to take the plunge.

Zero minutes. Laurel has gone shopping. And returning. She’s already decided to return two pairs of dark glasses that she was going to give to herself and me. Amateur shoppers return unwanted gifts after Christmas. Pros like Laurel do it before Christmas, when the Costco lines are much shorter. This seems like a good alone time to conduct my research.

Zero + seven minutes. I have finished bringing the tree into the house from its storage spot in the garage. This isn’t quite like singing “Santa Claus is coming to town” while you and your loved one hold each end of a freshly cut fir as you walk through the softly-falling snow. It is more like hauling three large plastic storage boxes and a large plastic tree bag down a walkway and into the living room. In fact, it is exactly like this.

Zero + seventeen minutes. I am ready to start putting the tree together. The ten minutes needed to get the branches out of the boxes/bag, fasten the two pieces of the trunk together, and insert the trunk into the stand would have been shorter if I hadn’t spent several minutes standing in the garage cursing, in a fine holiday spirit, “Now where the _____ is the ____ing tree stand?” Eventually I discovered that I was looking right at it, but for a reason known only to God and woman, Laurel had put it in a plastic bag. Who stores tree stands in plastic bags? Only humans lacking a Y gene, I suspect.

Zero + fifty-two minutes. It takes me thirty-five minutes to place all of the two billion (more or less) branches on the tree. They are color-coded, little circles on the branches matching circles on the trunk. It is easiest to start inserting the branches from the bottom up and we semi-cleverly stored them in each box/bag by level of the tree: lowest, next lowest, middlest, highest. However, we not so cleverly put them in each box/bag by taking the lower branches off before the higher. This meant that the branches I needed first were at the bottom. Subtract at least five minutes if you have more common sense.

However, add a lot more time to this phase if you are obsessive-compulsive. A great thing about artificial trees is that each branch, and every twig on each branch, can be bent into whatever position you like. When branches are stored they may need to be compressed, and thus uncompressed when put back on the tree. But even if the branch is in the same state as it was in the Christmas past, there is an almost irresistible temptation to fuss around with bending it into a just right Zen state. If you have OCD, allow a full day for putting the branches on. Better yet, get a real tree and accept it as it is.

Artificial tree set-up timeline: Fifty-two minutes from start to finish. [Times of others likely will be less, since our tree is larger than most.]

By comparison, we used to drive fifteen minutes to the tree lot, spend at least thirty minutes looking at every tree in the lot until Laurel decided that the very first tree we looked at was indeed the best one (just as I had said half an hour ago), take ten minutes to pay and tie the tree to our luggage rack, spend twenty-five minutes driving home at a glacially slow speed because I’d be afraid the tree would fall off the car if I went faster, and, finally, take at least fifteen minutes to saw off the butt of the tree, haul it into the house, and curse, in a fine holiday sprit, “Now, why the _____ won’t this _____ing tree stand up straight in the stand?” [Research note: cursing, in my experience, is an inevitable part of the tree set-up experience regardless of whether you go artificial or real.]

Real tree set-up estimate: Ninety-five minutes from start to finish.

Edge goes to artificial, in terms of time at least. And the final ten-foot decorated result, which is what really counts, is at least equal to the smaller real trees we used to have.

December 17, 2004

This is the season for over-shopping, over-eating, over-drinking, over-decorating, over-socializing, and over-warning about over-indulging. A picture emailed to us by a neighbor, Frank Haynes, wonderfully captures this over-the-top spirit. With equal abandon may we all throw ourselves into our own purrfect pleasures this holiday season. Postpone the guilt until January (2050).

December 15, 2004

I always feel like applauding a watchdog group that barks noisily when our so-called “public servants” are engaging in some shenanigans. So I will: clap, clap, clap to Friends of Marion County and their hard-working president, Roger Kaye, for catching the Salem City Council in what appears to be a conflict of interest cover-up.

Yesterday the Statesman-Journal reported that revisions to Salem’s annexation rules would be put on hold until January as a result of Roger’s efforts. Some background: In 2000 Salemites voted to approve annexations of land into the city. Presently city rules require that developers tell people how they plan to use the property that they want to have annexed.

This makes sense. Before voting on whether to bring a parcel into the city, wouldn’t you want to know what was going to be done with it? An ugly commercial strip mall is one thing; a creatively designed sustainable community is quite another thing.

However, now that more conservative city council members have replaced the progressive Mayor Swaim-era councilors, common sense is giving way to corporate interests. The council has been considering making changes to the annexation rules that would much reduce the information given to voters about a proposed development.

That’s fine, so long as the changes are made in an aboveboard manner. But Friends of Marion County revealed at a Monday City Council meeting that several councilors, plus Mayor Janet Taylor, have failed to disclose that they received substantial donations from the Colson & Colson Construction Co. which—no big surprise—would benefit from a revision to the annexation rules.

I’ll include a copy of Roger Kaye’s letter to Mayor Taylor and the City Council for the interest of Salem land use junkies. Laurel is a board member of Friends of Marion County and has been following this issue, along with other Measure 37 related matters. The battle is just beginning over whether short-term financial gain or the long-term public interest will be the centerpiece of land use planning in Oregon.

We hope very much for the latter. But this will only happen if elected officials vote to do the right thing, rather than what will bring them the most campaign contributions.

December 13, 2004

Last night’s final episode of “Survivor Vanuatu” proved that all the hours we invested in watching this Mother of All Reality TV Shows were well worth it. I don’t think Laurel and I have missed a single hour of Survivor since the series debuted. I’m sure that there are lots of PBS watchers who look down on our viewing habits, but I’ve found that most people who criticize Survivor haven’t watched enough of this show to know what they’re talking about.

You won’t get a better practical education in group dynamics and politics than by observing how eighteen aspirants for the $1 million prize are whittled down one by one until a final survivor remains. A friend, Randy Smith, argued on his weblog today that the outcome of Survivor Vanuatu proves that Hillary Clinton never will be elected president.

He notes that at one point the eventual male winner, Chris, was outnumbered six to one by females. The Vanuatu contestants started out in two tribes evenly divided by sex. At first the women stuck together in a firm Amazonian alliance, but bickering and bitching soon set in. Chris, a construction worker with finely-honed Machiavellian skills, did his best to foster divisions among the women. Yet they did most of the alliance-splitting themselves.

Randy thinks that this indicates that women are highly competitive with other women, which rings true. And this might indeed bode ill for Hillary. However, I find some good news for Democrats in the same dynamics that made Chris a million dollars richer. Week after week, Survivor Vanuatu demonstrated that as soon as a group of contestants formed a majority alliance that took control of the tribe, their solidity started to crumble.

The group would come together for a common goal: to get in power. And once this happened, sub-groups would vie for who was going to wield the power. Even when the decision to be made was who in the minority should be voted off the island next, the majority would experience frictions. These frictions could be exploited by the seemingly helpless contestants in the minority alliance, causing an unexpected reversal of fortune to occur.

We’re starting to see signs of this in Congress. Witness the Republican wrangling over the Intelligence Reform bill. Even though pressure from President Bush ended up with this bill being passed, dissention in the Republican ranks clearly was evident. So I find reasons for Democratic optimism in Survivor Vanuatu.

Also, pessimism. For the two finalists were both Karl Rove-like manipulative lying wheeler-dealers. The contestants with strong values who refused to lie, cheat, and steal ended up proving the truth of the adage, “Good guys finish last.” Like the Democrats.

The sexiest gal also didn’t finish first, though barrista/model Ami did very well. Interestingly, Ami has a girlfriend rather than a boyfriend. Watching her curvaceous bikini-clad body go through the Survivor paces each week (an excellent idea, having a challenge that involved the women diving into mud to catch pigs) left me with a lingering, and horribly sexist, feeling of “what a waste.” But I’m sure Ami’s partner enjoys her attractiveness just as much as a man would.

Laurel mentioned to me today that she had heard that Ami had posed for Playboy. Naturally I had to look into this, literally, as part of my weblog research. Yes, it is true. Beautifully true. Those who wish to conduct their own investigation can learn about Ami’s 1996 Playboy posing here.

A tasty blend of politics and sex. No wonder the well-aged Survivor vintage goes down so well.

December 11, 2004

Something possessed us to head off to the “Holiday Market” at the State Fairgrounds this afternoon. I was deathly afraid that this event would be akin to a Greens Show, which I’ve worked hard at avoiding my entire life. But Laurel assured me that it was sponsored by the Salem Saturday Market—so likely would be more artsy-craftsy than cutesy-decorationsy.

Actually it was a bit of each. We wandered around in our usual holiday spirit. Meaning, each of us looked for stuff that we wanted for ourselves. We do give some gifts to other people, but we also believe in the adage, “Giving starts at home.” That is, from me to me and from Laurel to Laurel.

This makes Christmas shopping within the Hines household so much easier. For the past few weeks Laurel has been handing me boxes and bags filled with things she has bought for herself, which I then squirrel away until it’s time for my Christmas Eve wrapping frenzy.

And the same goes for me. Naturally I do my best to forget about what I’ve given myself. This would be easier if, every time I walk into our extra bedroom, I didn’t see a corner of the cordless chainsaw case that arrived by UPS yesterday sticking out from under the desk where Laurel has half-heartedly hidden it.

At the Holiday Market I soon saw some cute potential presents for me and Serena. They were practicing their synchronized napping postures at a Humane Society adoption booth. I said to Laurel, “Wouldn’t it make you feel relaxed when you looked at them sleeping on our couch?” But Laurel, the allergic grinch, replied, “No, I’d feel like my nose was stopped up.”

Laurel looked at all sorts of dichroic glass jewelry and other petite items. She then decided that she wanted the absolutely heaviest thing for sale in the Jackman-Long building. Well, make that the second heaviest thing, as Silver Creek Statuary had an even larger concrete bench displayed. Laurel likes to have contemplative sitting spots scattered around our property. This will be an unrottable addition to our current wooden seats.

The Silver Creek Statuary folks kindly lent us a hand truck to cart our purchase out to the Prius. Serena wasn’t at all happy to find that she was going to be riding home with concrete rather than cats. I didn’t realize that dogs’ eyes turn blue when they are thinking of leaping at your throat and growling, “Get back inside that damn building and adopt those cats!” I also didn’t realize that dogs had remote viewing powers.

Now I have to figure out how to wrap three humungously heavy pieces of concrete and get them under our Christmas tree. I predict there are going to be some presents that Laurel won’t be picking up, shaking, and saying to herself, “Now, I wonder what this could be?” Unless she starts taking steroids.

December 09, 2004

Movie companies who are making a comedy should hire Laurel to do their pre-release audience testing. She is not usually a laugh-out-loud woman, so when she chortles exuberantly while watching a movie, that’s a good sign this is a comedic hit.

"Shrek 2” is one of just a few films in my recent memory that have earned the Laurel Laughed! Stamp of Approval. Another was “South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut.” But Shrek 2 has to get the smiling nod over South Park because using farting jokes to induce a laugh is like using chocolate cake to get someone to eat: it’s just too easy.

Shrek 2 manages to be hilarious while remaining virtually 100% family friendly. It also is inspiring for those of us (which includes almost everyone) who root for good-hearted green ogres to triumph over mean-spirited white royalty and Fairy Godmothers who don’t play fair.

When Puss-in-Boots has to interrupt his attempt to waylay Shrek, Princess Fiona, and Donkey because of a massive fur ball hacking attack, this was the first of many laugh-out-loud moments for us. Of course, given Laurel’s canine predilections, getting a laugh from her by bringing a sinister cat to its knees (literally) is to be expected.

Many other parts of the film are funny because they are so creatively unexpected. As Ebert observes in his review, Shrek 2 often goes against convention. In most tales of this sort you don’t get to see what happens after the brave hero rescues the damsel in distress from her tower dungeon.

But here, after Shrek returns home and carries Princess Fiona over the threshold of his cabin in the swamp, almost right away she starts nagging him to make the long trip to the kingdom of Far Far Away and visit her parents. I liked how Shrek put his ogre foot down in a macho fashion, telling Fiona “No way! We’re not going. This is not a good idea.”

Then the next scene shows him loading up the wagon as the three blind mice turn up to house sit while he’s in Far Far Away. You need to think, while you’re rescuing a princess, “Am I eventually going to need to be rescued from her?”

If you watch Shrek 2 on DVD, be sure to watch all of the closing credits. Or at least fast forward through them until you come to the “Far Far Away Idol” contest. The main characters sing songs suited to their personalities, and you get to interactively vote for the winner. There we were after midnight, past our 55 and 56 year old bedtimes, me repeatedly “rewinding” (in DVD fashion) this extra feature so we could vote for different characters and see what happens.

I felt like a kid again. Which is precisely the reason I liked Shrek 2 so much. And why I’ve got “South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut” on my list of movies to look for at the video store.

Bill Long’s recently-published book, “A Hard-Fought Hope: Journeying with Job through Mystery,” examines suffering through a biblical lens, the book of Job. Yet Bill, a Salem resident and friend of mine, doesn’t take a traditional religious approach to understanding Job. He starts by laying out a legal complaint against God, Ruler of the Universe on behalf of Job, an individual.

The charges? Breach of contract, negligence, loss of consortium, intentional infliction of emotional distress. The prayed-for remedy? What we all want, relief. Since Bill is both an attorney and a religious scholar, his discussion of the book of Job is systematic and logical while also compassionate and devotional. Committed Jews and Christians who read “A Hard-Fought Hope” will find that Bill speaks their language.

I’m neither a Jew nor a Christian, yet I enjoyed learning about a perspective on suffering that was unfamiliar to me. I might have read the book of Job sometime in my life, but it hadn’t registered with me. So I appreciated how Bill breaks down Job’s response to God’s testing of his faith into well-defined “stages of grief,” so to speak, that comprise his book’s central chapters: “A Torrent of Emotions,” “The Grace of Job’s Anger,” “The Music of Job’s Grief,” “The Power of a Question,” “The Turning Point,” “Wisdom Seeking,” “Listening Differently,” “Living Differently.”

The problem I had with “A Hard-Fought Hope” didn’t have to do with Bill’s writing, which is highly readable, nor with the book’s subject of suffering, which is of intense interest to me—particularly when life doesn’t go the way I think it should (in other words, I’m interested almost all of the time). No, what gave me pause throughout my reading of the 160 pages was this: I couldn’t stop thinking, “Is all this dialogue in the book of Job between a suffering man and the God who makes him suffer anything more than literary fantasy?”

Lots of novelists have written about suffering. Why isn’t their message taken as seriously as the words in the Old Testament that Bill interprets for us? It must be because so many people consider that the book of Job really is a true description of how God sent suffering to a man, and how that man responded to the divine test. Otherwise, Job is just a fictional description of a guy with delusions that a unseen malevolent metaphysical force is out to get him: “He has torn me in his wrath, and hated me; he has gnashed his teeth at me; my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.” (16:9) “I was at ease, and he broke me in two; he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces.” (16:12)

Personally, I think the book of Job is fiction. There really isn’t a God who gnashes his teeth, seizes people by the neck, and breaks them in two. But many believers think there is, which to me is the most interesting question about Job in particular and the Bible in general: Why does the notion of an external, supernatural source of suffering hold so much appeal? A short possible answer: Because a God who gives suffering can take away suffering, which lifts the responsibility for eliminating suffering off of my shoulders and puts it in God’s hands.

Near the end of his book, Bill writes: “If only Job could have believed in a God who did not intervene in human life, that would have solved all his difficulties.” Yes, in a sense it would have. Job still would be afflicted by all that he was suffering from, but he wouldn’t have the significant added burden of suffering from a belief that the God he loved so much had singled him out for special nasty treatment.

I know lots of people who believe that many, if not most, of the things that happen to them are for a reason. This isn’t a peculiarly Christian/Jewish doctrine. Some think that angelic beings or spiritual guides are directing the course of their life. Others, an ascended (or descended) guru, master, avatar, yogi, or other entity with a power to alter events. I can’t say for sure that they are wrong. Still, almost all the evidence of both science and common sense points toward natural, universal, and impersonal causes of life’s happenings.

My bet is that the only cure for suffering is what we prescribe ourselves. This is the basic Buddhist perspective, echoed in a little book by Paramhansa Yogananda that I re-read recently: “The Science of Religion.” I don’t agree with everything Yogananda says, but I find persuasive his essential psychological premises: “Desire, or the increase of conditions of excitations of the mind, is the source of pain or misery….Every human being is seeking to attain Bliss by fulfilling desire, but he mistakenly stops at pleasure; so his desires never end, and he is swept away into the whirlpool of pain.”

This may sound rather New Agey. Still, when I consider Yogananda’s well-reasoned arguments, which are more sophisticated than my two sentence summary here, they resonate with me more persuasively than does the book of Job. For Yogananda, Buddhism, and Eastern philosophy in general (plus the mystic neo-Platonism of Plotinus) locate the source of suffering in the human psyche, not God’s will. This means that we should look inward to our own self for answers to why life is so painful, not outward to a being in the heavens.

Still, what do I really know about all this? Not much. What I’ve just said is only one of many options on this interesting and amusing “Why Do We Suffer?” quiz.

Unfortunately, there aren’t any answers at the end of the quiz. Just more questions. Maybe that is the best answer.

December 06, 2004

Here’s a photo of Dave Jones (in the blue gi) and the rest of our motley Pacific Martial Arts dojo gang. Dave was awarded a well-deserved black belt by Sensei Warren Allen (in the middle) last Saturday. He’s expert at a variety of weapons and a highly skilled ground/jujitsu fighter. Plus, a great guy with a laid back personality and some cool tattoos.

My description of ourselves as “motley” is a compliment. When I got home and looked at the photo of (from left to right) Bob, Dennis, Warren, Dave, me, and Mike (kneeling), I realized each of us is attired quite differently. Black gis are the most common fashion statement, but even the three of us inclined to a Gothic look are disparate in our accessories.

After almost nine years of traditional Shotokan karate training where everyone had to wear a plain white gi (and only females wore a t-shirt under it, which helps explain my habitual t-shirtless look), I much appreciate Warren’s hang-loose Taoist attitude toward the dojo dress code. Discipline is needed in the martial arts, but dressing exactly alike doesn’t teach anything except rigidity.

It’s interesting that my changeover from the linear, dogmatic, structured Shotokan training to the Pacific Martial Arts circular, eclectic, flowing style has pretty much paralleled a similar change in how I approach meditation and spirituality. I’ve become much less rigid in my philosophical/metaphysical beliefs during the years I’ve been trying to achieve a similar openness in my martial arts training.

My new Church of the Churchless site reflects this creedless creed mentality. I wish that I could recall everything Warren said as he was awarding Dave his black belt, as it echoed the message I’ve been preaching at the Church of the Churchless. Except, Warren said his piece more briefly and with more punch than I usually do.

Sensei Allen spoke of how the goal is to be unpredictable in the practice of “formless form,” which was Bruce Lee’s basic approach to the martial arts. Do what works. Don’t get stuck in patterns. Respond fluidly to the situation. Let intuition guide your moves, not pre-programmed conscious thought.

I’ll probably never use my martial arts training in “real life.” Laurel and I don’t frequent bars, and most altercations seem to happen where people are drinking. But then again, I will use it. For real life is what I live every day, as does everyone. Being as philosophical as I am, my deepest motivation in practicing martial arts is to learn how to apply my experience in the dojo to my everyday existence.

Last night Laurel was flipping through a catalog, saw a t-shirt advertised, and said “Now, that message fits me: I’ve got a black belt in shopping.” Absolutely true.

We’re all black belts in something. The trick is to make that something the right thing.

Then I remembered: it was me. This brought the object of my rage wonderfully close to hand, but as soon as I started to strangle myself I felt a strong urge to forgive. Which I have. Anyway, it is Microsoft whose neck should be wrung, notwithstanding the difficulty of identifying where to apply such pressure on a corporate body.

I spent most of the afternoon taking the laptop to the nearest Best Buy store, having it inspected by a friendly member of the Geek Squad, being told that the wisest course of action was to reinstall the hard disk backup that I had fortuitously made, and initiating the reinstall—which ended up taking over twelve hours to complete over a slow PC card connection.

All because the SP2 software screwed something up on a computer that hitherto had been working flawlessly. Yes, I know. I should have gotten a Mac. If you’re thinking of leaving a comment to that effect, don’t bother. I can’t disagree with you, but I’m locked into this sadomasochistic relationship with Microsoft and can’t leave now.

We Windows users are a lot like Cinderella. We toil away cleaning up the crap that the lord and lady of the manor imperiously leave lying around. The rich royals lavishly party on without deigning to improve the living conditions of those who make their palace possible.

I read recently that Microsoft has used some thirty billion dollars of its cash horde to pay a hefty dividend to its stockholders. Here’s a cry from the scullery maid: “Hey! How about using some of those billions to fix your software? Instead of having the blue screen of death tell me that some indecipherable something has screwed up, whereupon following each of your useless pieces of advice to attempt a fix of the problem leads me directly back to the blue screen of death, wouldn’t it be cool if your software that caused the problem could also fix the problem?”

Here’s my dream Windows error message: “Dear esteemed user of our operating system, we apologize profusely for any inconvenience we have caused you in the course of your installing Service Pack 2. An unanticipated problem has arisen which our software is correcting at this very moment. Soon your computer will be working fine again. You need do nothing more; rest assured that all will be well in ____ minutes. Please go to your nearest Starbucks store, order a Grande Latte, and tell the staff to charge it to this Microsoft account: ______.”

Until this fantasy becomes reality I will continue to rely on the hard disk backup system that just saved my proverbial ass. When Laurel plaintively asked, “Have all my files disappeared?” I wasn’t sure. But I confidently said, “No. The CMS backup system should restore everything just as it was.” Which it did, booting from a Rescue Disk CD and apparently using a Linux program to get Windows back up and running. I can testify that the CMS Bounce Back software worked as advertised, copying over the entire non-functional hard drive with the backed-up files.

Every Windows user should have a complete hard disk backup. You never know when the Dark Side of Microsoft will show its ugly face. Mac users, you probably should do the same, but there’s no doubt that you are treated better by the lord and master of your operating system.

December 03, 2004

Here's a glimpse of Venice and Florence through the camera lens of my daughter, Celeste Vos, and her husband Patrick. I've selected six photos from their Ofoto album that struck my eye.

A self-portrait of Celeste and Patrick at Venice's Piazza San Marco. What a great-looking couple! Don't you think it's time for them to reproduce their obviously exemplary genetic heritage into the form of a child (and grandchild)? This father thinks so.

Celeste lost at night in the streets of Venice. I like the gloomy atmosphere of this photo. Having been lost in Venice myself back in the late 1960s, I can identify with the situation: I would take a street that deadended at a canal and backtrack to a street that would curve around and lead me back to a street that I had a sneaking supicion would deadend at a canal because I was going around in circles.

A nice shot of Patrick blending with his surroundings. Do you think they carried different colored sweaters around with them on their Venice excursions? I doubt it. This must have been photo serendipity.

On to Florence, where Celeste looks tres European in front of the Piazza Duomo. Wouldn't it be great if we could combine the best of the United States with the best of Europe? I think this merging of bests would result in a USA that is a lot more livable, interesting, and attractive. I wish all those uber-patriotic Europe-bashers would go over there and see how much we have to learn from people who tend to put a higher priority on truly living well instead of merely working hard.

Celeste posing in front of a naked guy. This statue sure wouldn't be standing if it was at the Justice Department while Ashcroft was in charge. Another nice attribute of Europeans is that religion plays a miniscule role in their politics. Laurel and I have a friend of German heritage who tells us that if a European leader made a big deal about his religious faith, he couldn't be elected to a high office. Just the opposite is true in the U.S., sadly.

Here's Celeste and Patrick looking all dapper by what I assume is the Arno river. Thanks for sharing your European adventure, guys. Their complete photo album can be perused here.

December 01, 2004

"Do all you can with what you have, in the time you have, in the place you are." These are the words of Nkosi Johnson, a South African boy born with AIDS who died at the age of twelve with more wisdom than most of us accumulate in a much longer lifetime.

I heard Jim Wooten recite Nkosi’s mantra as I was driving home tonight. Wooten has written a book about Nkosi and the South African AIDS crisis, “We Are All the Same.” The title is how Nkosi ended his speech to an international AIDS conference.

I don’t know much about Nkosi Johnson. And I’m not one to get teary-eyed over emotional stories like those Wooten was relating on Oregon Public Broadcasting a few hours ago.

But when Wooten said that he wanted to end an interview with Nkosi because he thought the boy was tired, and Nkosi said, “No, you can’t. You haven’t asked me about dying yet”—that moved me.

As I’ve noted before, I don’t like to think about my own death. So I much admire the determination of young Nkosi, who knew that he was about to die, to tell those of us who would continue to live, how to live. Wooten said that Nkosi spoke about death for three or four minutes and advised…

"Do all you can with what you have, in the time you have, in the place you are."

There’s so much I want to say about these words, but I’m afraid that whatever I try to add to what Nkosi said will only detract from his simple wisdom.

So I’ll stop writing and go cook some tacos. Fully. Attentively. With meatless “meat,” lettuce, tomato, cheese, avocado, tortillas, oil. Should take about fifteen minutes. In the kitchen.

Thank you, Nkosi, for reminding me how to live each moment. For however many I have left.